I’m new to the community and not fully up to speed on all things openSUSE yet, so I’d love to get your thoughts:
Which do you prefer between Tumbleweed and Leap, and why? Are there more software packages available on Tumbleweed compared to Leap? Is there a big difference in driver support and stability between the two?
P.S. Yesterday I made the switch from Debian to openSUSE Tumbleweed, and apparently the NVIDIA drivers are out of sync, so my driver isn’t working right now. Some users mentioned that this happens occasionally, so I was considering switching to Leap, but I’m not sure if it would be the right fit for me. That’s why I’m asking for your input.
I have both installed main desktop system. But I normally use Leap.
I also have a laptop, where only Tumbleweed is installed.
My preference for Leap: It works well, and does all that I normally need. Updates are usually small enough. I usually update once per week.
For Tumbleweed, the updates are larger and can occasionally be a burden. However, I’m using an SSD (actually an NVME drive), so updates usually apply quickly. But the download of the updates can be slow at times.
The big advantage of Tumbleweed, is that its software is pretty much up-to-date. But Leap has everything that I actually need, and it does get security patches (possibly backported) pretty quickly.
Perhaps one point: it is not only about the up-to-dateness of packages at TW. TW does also provide a bunch of packages that is NOT included in Leap pool. If you prefer Leap AND want to have such packages you have to look for alternatives: e.g. Flatpak (mostly for GUI) or the appropriate dev/factory repos that include those packages. That said, be careful with dev/factory repos! (I do use Leap. And I do include some packages from dev/factory repos not available otherwise at Leap pool. But I do not use those repos generally!)
I have 40+ working multiboot computers, of which two run 24/7: one OS/2, the other Leap. Leap is on all the others that leap supports, 10, and TW is on all except the OS/2 PC and one other (along with copious other distros). Leap to me presents less fuss than TW, as along with fewer and thus faster updates, there are only two packages (not counting multimedia packages, or KDE3, which changes not except when forced by build system or deps) not provided by its standard repos that I depend on, of which one is just a matter of latest version when it increments from latest in Leap, and the other only available from its author (both text mode file managers). I have Slowroll too, recently cut from 15 installations to 11, as I find its update schedule no advantage over TW’s.
For someone new to both Linux and openSUSE, and not using latest/greatest (less than around 9 months old) hardware, Leap makes the most sense to me. For those with substantial previous Linux experience, between Leap and TW it’s a tossup based upon extra and newer app availability vs. tolerance for occasional (more often for NVidia users) update disruption. Don’t let Leap’s apparently old kernel version mislead you. Its version number is relatively ancient, but it’s loaded with backports.
If your machine is new, you mentioned you have nvidia card if it is new also and your internet connection is fast or descent enough for a large dup, I will go with tumbleweed. Oh with nvidia out of sync, you have two choices go with the rpm or go with the .run installer. I use the .run installer and DKMS enabled so I don’t need to reinstall the .run driver when there is a kernel upgrade.
I moved from leap to tumbleweed for the newest software; software not even in most repos. I look for new interesting science apps on the internet to try out These are always compiled using latest dependencies. I think the developers always compile with the latest dependencies even though they are probably not using the latest features.
While on leap I was always looking for newer dependencies than those installed and I was always installing packages from outside of zypper to try to compile something.
I am finding that when running tumbleweed I have a much better chance running new software than with leap.
My system is nothing exotic from a hardware standpoint and I have found the annoyances to be the same for both leap and tumbleweed. Most annoyances are audio and especially bluetooth but I have procedures worked out to minimize problems.
What I would suggest is starting with Slowroll, the NVIDIA issues are a recurring issue on TW ( though not only on TW, also on other rolling distros ) that Slowroll mostly avoids due to it’s delay towards TW.
I would highly recommend Kalpa or Aeon.
I can’t attest for Aeon but Kalpa is really really good.
The premise of the way it works is:
Base OS, the main aspect of the operating system stays static and up to date while you use Flatpacks for your applications.
Years of linux experience and still playing with the notion. I’m finding it really nice.
Don’t be fooled by “stability”, which has at least two meanings.
Want a system with “stable” APIs and kABI, meaning interfaces that do not change, presumably because you are running proprietary software that must rely on a set binary interface? Use Leap, no question about that.
Fear about Tumbleweed being “unstable”? Of course Tumbleweed changes often, sometime very often (kernel 7.1.7 remained in the repo for just two days).
Does Tumbleweed “break” often, so is it “unstable” meaning “not really usable” often?
No, if you exercise some discipline in system administration, and snapper rollback is your friend if something really goes the wrong way.
As for Aeon and Kalpa, they are not for everybody (please see the notes on their sites) and be aware that Aeon is still in an RC state and Kalpa is not even beta software.
They are niche products that may very well suit specialized needs.
The default configuration for snapper does not include the /home directory and is meant to restore a functional system, not to backup user files.
You may of course change that, but it is not trivial.
And, having some experience there, I would strongly advice against it. What happened was me rolling back 2 weeks , then dupping ~20 times and then finding out that the docs I had been working on had also rolled back. And no snapshot anymore that did contain the changed versions. Fortunately I had my monthly backup containing the changes, but it was quite a lot of work to reconstruct every thing. I immediately gave up and stuck to my weekly backup routine.
I personally use Slowroll on my laptop and Leap on my desktop PC. Back in the day I had issues with Tumbleweed messing with my USB mouse not working, so I got used to Leap for a while. I’ve been testing Slowroll for a while and it seems better suited for me.
When it comes to software, the main difference is Tumbleweed having up-to-date software and, if I don’t remember wrong, some additional packages available there. Flatpak is really good for Leap in this case.
Back in the day, when I started using Leap installed on a laptop, I had a somewhat new Wi-Fi card and the driver in the kernel version shipped then, was not working. If you want to use Leap and you have similar case with some hardware not working, you can try the kernel backport repo to install a newer kernel and see if that fixes the issue.
I also like Leap because I just like the thrill involved with receiving a new major version of KDE Plasma and all the updates it has after some time. Like in the old days when updating OS version.
